Alex Henry Foster
Alex Henry Foster shares much anticipated LP Kimiyo. To celebrate its release, see the lyric video for track "Under a Luxuriant Sky".
"Some songs are written long before you’re even emotionally disposed to welcome their liberating nature, to abandon yourself in their enfranchising essence," remarks Foster. "'Under a Luxuriant Sky' is one of them. It slowly surfaces throughout what feels like an endless journey of turbulence, delicately enlightening a path of self-acceptance, gently lying its hopeful benevolence at your sorrowful feet to shine your way home... Wherever home may be."
Says Foster about the LP, “I have always been looking for a pretext or an excuse to work with Momoka. She’s got a very unique spirit, and she’s a very inspiring and insightful person.We have a common view about life in general and spirituality in particular, but most of all, she is a fantastic artist for whom I have the utmost admiration. When it became obvious to me that I would be in no way capable of singing or speaking on the songs we had sketched, Momoka was in my opinion the only person able to transcend the project’s spirit. The poetry of Voyage à la Mer was to be the core holding the whole project together, but I wanted Momoka to make her own interpretation of the lyrical undercurrent and to express herself in her native tongue, so she wouldn’t have to be my voice or try to emulate what my words might convey. We set the canvas, laid down the color palettes, but it was for her to express herself and be the painting.”
Alex Henry Foster's new project Voyage à la Mer is an artistic multidisciplinary endeavor based on the asymmetry of human emotions. While the project refers to the title of a self-searching poetry and meditative notebook he started writing during a trip to Japan back in 2010, it also symbolizes the fundamental connection that individuals and communities nurture with water, the beginning of time, ritualistic pilgrimages, redemptive processions, purification, the incarnation related to the flow of life, birth and death, the passage to afterlife, transition, and rebirth. The 2010 trip to Japan forms the basis of the project, in particular a conversation with the parents of a young Japanese fan who, prior to taking his own life, had been corresponding with Foster via letters the two sent back and forth. As time passed, Foster underwent a life-altering cardiac surgery. He spent months recovering, unable to talk, and unsure he would have the ability to sing in the future. Foster writes: “I was in no other position than to either feel sorry for myself or have a prolonged look with myself to figure out who I was beyond the distressing sensation of losing my identity. The introspective clarity brought me right back to Japan, in what had been for me a transformative experience almost 15 years ago, highlighted by the long-forgotten fragments of film, photographs, and people's testimonies I had the privilege of witnessing.” Slowly starting to regain energy, Foster contacted his friend and longtime creative accomplice Ben Lemelin to assist him in writing and creating. With Foster still regaining his voice, the duo invited fellow artist Momoka to be the voice of the first incarnation of the project, titled Kimiyo.
Alex Henry Foster has crafted four different creative entities; the albums Kimiyo and A Measure of Space and Sounds, the film Voyage à la Mer, and the in-public conversations & live musical improvisation affair Of Flashes and Other Currents, all due to be released over the span of 2024.
Website: alexhenryfoster.com